Presuppositional Effects of Scrambling Reconsidered*

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c (What’s your neighbor building?) - My neighbor is building a desk. (Reinhart 1997:155) Scrambling of the object NP in Dutch shifts the main stress to the verb. This is because the scrambled object is not the most deeply embedded and therefore is destressed in the sense that it does not bear the main stress. By (20), the structure in which the object is scrambled is usable if and only if the scrambled object is presuppositional in the sense that it is D-linked to an accessible discourse entity. (20) A DP is destressed if and only if it is D-linked to an accessible discourse entity. (Neeleman and Reinhart 1998:338) The lack of stress on the scrambled object is now analyzed as the source of the presuppositional effect of scrambling. For cases like (21) and (22), in which the stress falls on a position not expected by the nuclear stress rule, Reinhart proposes the rule in (23). (21) (Has your neighbor bought a desk already?) a. # - My neighbor is building a desk. b. - My neighbor is building a desk. (22) (Who is building a desk?) a. # - My neighbor is building a desk. b. - My neighbor is building a desk. (Reinhart 1997:157) (Reinhart 1997:157) (23) Stress shift Relocate the main stress on a constituent you want to focus. (Reinhart 1997:157) Reinhart further argues that stress shift in fact involves two distinct operations. One is destressing, whereby the object is destressed resulting in the prominent stress on the verb. The operation is subject to (20) above, and is allowed only when destressing by scrambling is unavailable (as it is in English). The other operation of stress shift is stress strengthening, whereby an extra stress is assigned to the verb without destressing of the object. 5 It is governed by the following economy condition. 6 5 Stress shift obtained by strengthening of the verb retains a secondary stress on the object. The effect should be distinguished from that obtained by scrambling, where the object is essentially destressed and hence must be D-linked. This can be seen with “light” indefinites, as illustrated below. (i) a. Have you eaten anything already? b. Heb je al iets gegeten have you already anything eaten c. *Heb je iets al gegeten? have you anything already eaten (Reinhart 1997:163) 6
(24) Economy entails that stress strengthening applies only to derive foci not already in the focus set. (Neeleman and Reinhart 1998:340) The condition explains why focus obtained by stress strengthening cannot project. To see this, consider (21b) and (22b) again. These sentences cannot be used as an answer to either of the questions in (25) and (26) below. (The underline indicates the focus required in the given context. (25) requires a VP focus and (26) an IP focus.) (25) What’s your neighbor doing these days? a. - My neighbor is building a desk. b. # - My neighbor is building a desk. (=(21b)) (26) What’s this noise? a. - My neighbor is building a desk. b. # - My neighbor is building a desk. (=(21b)) c. # - My neighbor is building a desk. (=(22b)) (Reinhart 1999) (Reinhart 1999) This indicates that the focus obtained by shifted stress does not “project.” This is in contrast with the observation above that stress obtained by the nuclear stress rule allows any projection containing it to serve as focus. This follows from the economy condition given in (24). The shifted stress is allowed only when it is needed to derive foci that are not in the focus set consisting of projections containing the unmarked stress obtained by the nuclear stress rule. As shown above, (25b) and (26b,c) are not allowed because the VP focus and the IP focus are available in the focus set of the sentence in (18). As we will see shortly, this view of the stress-shifting operation plays a crucial role in the analysis of scrambling and its interaction with focus in Japanese as well. 3. Scrambling in Japanese and Its Interaction with Focus Let us now turn to Japanese scrambling. Tada (1993) observes that scrambling in Japanese has three subclasses with distinct A/A’ properties, as summarized in (28). The three kinds of scrambling are called S(hort)-scrambling, M(iddle)-scrambling, and The “light” indefinites anything and iets in (ia,b) cannot be fully destressed because they are not anaphoric. To have the main stress on the verb, stress strengthening should be the only option here. If the object is scrambled, it should be fully destressed, and hence must be interpreted as D-linked, but this is impossible with “light” indefinites. This accounts for the ill-formedness of the scrambled counterpart in (ic). 6 Notice that this assumes a relative concept of well-formedness and requires a global computation. Reinhart 1999 refers to this type of economy condition as “reference-set economy.” This is also called “interface economy” in Reinhart 1995, 1997 in that a marked derivation becomes the optimal option if it is the only way to satisfy an interface need. See also Chomsky 1995 on the role of economy in human language. 7
Page 1 and 2: February 2001 To appear in the proc
Page 3 and 4: the generalization given in (4), an
Page 5: (15) Main stress assigned by the nu
Page 11: . Taroo-ga hon-oi Hanako-ni ti aget
Page 14 and 15: By examining many other examples il
Page 16 and 17: 4. Floating Quantifiers and Focus W
Page 18 and 19: However, the partitive reading on t
Page 20 and 21: (60) #okane-o dare-ga Taroo-ga nusu
Page 22 and 23: Kamio, Akio. 1983. Meishiku-no kooz

Presuppositional Effects of Scrambling Reconsidered*

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